Sunday, June 04, 2006

London Averted?

"We are a target because of who we are and how we live, our society, our diversity and our values," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in Ottawa a day after 17 individuals in Southern Ontario were arrested in what represents the country’s largest antiterrorist operation since Canada’s Antiterrorism Act came into effect in December 2001.

While it is much too soon to determine what those individuals’ ultimate intentions were, the nearly three tons of ammonium nitrate (a fertilizer) seized—three time as much as was used in the Oklahoma bombing in 1995—along with a cell phone that may have been utilized as a makeshift detonator, leave little doubt as to what may have been in the pipeline. But it will take days, if not weeks, before everything can be pieced together. For the moment, it’s all maybes, loose connections and theories, and much too soon to claim, as some officials already have, that an attack was foiled. As is usually the case in such situations, we have the end state in mind—a massive bombing somewhere in Canada, possibly in Toronto’s metropolitan area—which is inevitably inspired by the precedents set by the Madrid and London bombings. But the logical building of the case must operate from the bottom up; in other words, we cannot assume a conclusion and make the evidence fit that picture. That would be too easy. Far too often, the reality is orders of magnitude away from what things seem at first. In a just society like Canada’s, we cannot simply put intentions in a suspect’s head, or use a few items as evidence of those intentions. Time and hard work on the part of law enforcement and security officials will, hopefully, provide us with a clearer picture. But for the time being, let us use caution against reaching foregone conclusions.

That being said, there is no doubt that in the past few years Canada may have started showing up on certain radar screens. Despite my objections to the fear-mongering approach that some high-ranking officials in Canada’s security establishment have used since 9/11, I do believe that a terrorist attack on Canadian soil is not impossible. However, the Prime Minister’s reaction to the arrests in Toronto, to the effect that we are a target because of who and what we are, irresponsibly avoids looking at reality in the eye. President Bush used that line for a while, but surely few Americans believe the “we are blameless” line anymore.

It’s about time Canadians realized that there is a cost to engaging the world, and that we cannot deploy thousands of soldiers into Afghanistan, no matter how humanitarian we make this endeavor sound, and not expect a reaction. In the past months, Canadian forces in and around Kandahar have become increasingly proactive in their anti-Taliban operations. In the process, people are bound to get hurt. Eventually, someone—Taliban or otherwise—will get killed, and that someone will have a sibling, a friend, a cousin, in Canada. A would-be terrorist will not resort to violence because of some fundamental hatred for our system of values or our set of liberties; he or she will commit an attack because he feels that a wrong must be righted, a death avenged, or a point made. Canadians like to see themselves as peacekeepers, and we like to think that what our brave soldiers are accomplishing in Afghanistan is welcomed by all. But it is not. It is war-making, and there’s nothing clean about that. Bullets are being fired, people are being arrested, and errors are sometimes being made. This is not to say that we should not be in Afghanistan, or that Canada should shirk its responsibilities as a global player for fear that we’ll get a black eye somewhere down the road. But a responsible Prime Minister should do his utmost to educate the population and prepare it for the eventuality that the battle we brought to someone else’s shores may, at some point in the future, be visited upon ours. It’s time to be honest with ourselves: we are not innocent anymore, and the hatred that some individuals feel towards us is the result of our actions, not of who or what we are as citizens of an open, liberal democracy.

5 comments:

Anonymous
said...

"we are not innocent anymore, and the hatred that some individuals feel towards us is the result of our actions, not of who or what we are as citizens of an open, liberal democracy."

I get your point, but does that justify them for - potentially - bombing our buildings and killing innocents? Is there no other answer to the violence that we might have bred ourselves abroad (for instance in Afghanistan)than more violence? Is there any way we can get out of the eye-for-eye vicious attitude?

I hate thinking we would blame OURSELVES for the acts perpetrated by others. We are responsible for our acts; what others CHOOSE to do as a consequence of our acts is no longer in our hands...

Thank you for your comments. To answer your question, yes, there is an alternative to an eye for an eye, but that alternative can only exist when people choose to adopt it. When I write that we are no longer innocent, this does not by any means signify that I condone acts of violence against civilians, which I deplore with all by being. However, by adopting the path of violence (e.g., deploying 2,300 soldiers to Afghanistan and engaging in increasingly aggressive activities), Canada exposes itself to the small minority (remember, it is a small minority) of people who, for one reason or another, will elect to respond in kind. True, our soldiers are trained and do their utmost to avoid causing harm to civilians, and when it happens we can safely assume that it was accidental (here I’m thinking mostly of the Afghan who was shot in a cab by Canadian soldiers a few months ago), but in the heart of those who suffer from the use of violence, it is understandably difficult to make the distinction, as the end result is the same. To someone who would decide to exact revenge for that act, Afghan civilians are as blameless as would be those who, in Toronto, for example, are targeted by a car bomb. Since we’ve opened the Pandora’s box of violence, it inherently makes it easier for others to justify the use of force against us. By using force, we remove the possibility of truly being the blameless victim.

Once again, it is far from my intention to attempt to justify attacks targeting civilians. What I do posit, however, is that once we’ve chosen to use the instrument of violence, we open the door through which the same kind of treatment can be visited against us. It makes little difference whether our soldiers are there to do good. From our own perspective they are, but seen from a different angle—and here I mean the Afghan one—Canadian soldiers might not necessarily be seen as glowingly.

An eye for an eye makes us blind, the saying goes. It is a true one, and most people around the world believe in its logic. But a small minority doesn’t, and therein lies the danger.

About Me

Taipei-based Senior Non-Resident Fellow at China Policy Institute @ U Nott, associate researcher at CEFC, ed.-in-chief Thinking Taiwan. M.A. War Studies Royal Military College of Canada, International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance from CIHC, CX-77 (peacekeeping) Lester Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, B.A. English lit. Deputy news editor and a reporter at the Taipei Times 2006-2013. Intelligence officer for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (2003-2005). I have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, SCMP, National Interest, Lowy Interpreter, The Age, Jane’s Defence Weekly, Jane’s Intelligence Review, Jane’s Intelligence Weekly, Jane’s Navy International, Jane’s International Defence Review, the Ottawa Citizen, China Brief, CounterPunch, FrontLine Security, Strategic Vision, Asia Today International, The News Lens and The Diplomat. I was the 2012 recipient of the award for Outstanding Journalism from the Chen Wen-chen Memorial Foundation. I have appeared on BBC, CBC, CNN, VOA, RTI and Al-Jazeera. I use a Nikon D7100 camera. Follow me on Twitter @jmichaelcole1